I may have degenerated into a person who starts packing about six minutes before heading to the airport for a flight that usually requires hurdling over all-comers in Departures in order to board in the nick of time, but when it comes to returning home, no one packs with more care.
So there I was at 4 a.m. arranging the suitcase with military precision, drying every bristle of my toothbrush. Even the birds were still asleep. Three hours to spare before the return flight from Paris to Dublin, and I was better prepared than a military cadet.
Then it happened. A sickening, cold feeling rose from somewhere behind me as I stood in the dark and swallowed. My heart seemed not so much louder, just more obvious than usual. That funny twitch I've begun getting under my left eye at times of crisis pulsed on cue.
The car keys. The car, I trusted, was still parked where I left it at Dublin Airport, but where were the keys?
Self-delusion
Oh boy, here we go again. Still black night and I'm as awake as only I can be. After I'd unpacked and re-packed my bag, searched and re-searched pockets, no amount of self delusion or denial could obscure the fact that the car keys were not so much gone as not there - or, to be exact, elsewhere.
In such situations, there is little to do, so I did what I invariably do when there's no place to run and the world is asleep but I'm as awake as one of those all-knowing owls that never blink - I cleaned my teeth again.
My child muttered in her sleep. I asked if she'd seen the car keys. She replied with unnerving clarity, considering she was still asleep:
"Mommy, you're always losing the keys, it's becoming ridiculous." What? She's six. She's not even awake.
Still, sensing hope, I opened the 101 Dalmatians bag she keeps her collection of Little Ponies in. It would be so simple; she knows I lose things like house keys, credit cards, flashlights, passports and now car keys. She's resourceful; she'd put the keys in with her ponies.
Then I saw the car keys. But not with the ponies. Clear as the view of the breakfast bowl that should have been before me, but isn't either, the car keys materialised before my mind where I had last seen them - three days earlier in the security tray at Departures in Dublin airport. The same airport I had arrived at, unusually early for me, drinking three hot chocolates over about two hours while waiting to board.
So how come I had not taken them with me, particularly as I had so cleverly removed the house keys from my pocket and left them in the car - I know all about losing house keys. Once I had to climb up to a third-storey window; I slipped as a sliver of frame broke off and my hand shot through the thin, old glass. All the while I could see the house keys on the desk on the other side of the window as my blood dripped down it.
Messy episode
Standing in the dark, recalling that messy episode, I knew the house keys were safe inside the locked car at Dublin airport - the locked car that had a pretty good chance of staying locked longer than intended.
But who would have thought I was going to lose the car keys? What next? My dogs? My mind? My passport - I've already admitted to passports - but dogs? Not so far.
No doubt the AA deals with missing car keys all the time. Well, it was too early to act. Dawn hadn't even broken and there I was revisiting my history of missing items.
All the way to the airport I festered, wondering about the stranger who might have unintentionally taken my keys when I helped an irritated woman and her collection of crying children with their bags while the man with them was frisked.
At the airport in Paris, no one cared too much about my keys. "We don't have them," I was told." I didn't say you did, I was just asking what the procedure is. What happens to keys that are left behind?" I'd have liked to scream, but I opted for casual politeness. The airport people seemed a grumpy bunch. But then, perhaps they hadn't woken up properly, whereas I hadn't slept.
Ticket staff
Same programmed attitude as we boarded. I asked the ticket staff what happened to abandoned keys. "We don't have them," snapped the man and the woman, neither of whom looked at me. "I didn't say you did. I was just wondering."
"You'll have to wait to get to Dublin. You can rent a car." "But I want my car."
I'm seated. My car keys seem to hover in the small pocket of air above the warm plastic breakfast. I feel sick. The hostess is friendlier than the other staff I'd met so far. I tell her about the keys.
"Well, we don't have them here," she sighs.
"I didn't think you did." My eye continues twitching.
At Dublin airport I share my plight with three sets of airport staff. "We don't have your keys." I ask if they would have been handed into the lost and found. Or passed to the police? "We don't have a lost and found," one yawns. "Security?" says another. "It's unlikely. You could try. There are taxis outside."
Outside, past the taxis, I find the airport police. "What are they like?" I'm asked. I repeat that they're Volkswagen keys. "Have they any identifying features?" "Well, they're Volkswagen keys." "Any identifying features?" "There's a V appearing to sit on a W."
Off strolls the garda. A few minutes later, he returns, peers at me and holds the keys at head height. It costs £1 to release them.